Myanmar junta stubborn as ever
By Nick Cumming-Bruce
GENEVA - Once again, a United Nations (UN) investigator of human rights in
Myanmar has urged its ruling generals to release all political prisoners. And
once again the junta has brusquely brushed off the demand. Myanmar has no
prisoners of conscience, only law breakers, its ambassador to the UN in Geneva,
Wunna Maung Win, brazenly asserted.
So nothing has changed? Well, not quite.
In a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, special
rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana painted a grim picture of conditions in the
country: 400 political prisoners sentenced in the last quarter of 2008 to jail
terms ranging from 25 to 64 years; a total of more than 2,100 political
prisoners in the
country (twice the figure of two years ago); and a 20-year-old student union
member jailed for 104 years in January.
There was more: opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi detained for the last six
years under a law that permits detention for no more than five years; multiple
abuses of the rights of Rohingya Muslims in North Rakhine state; continuing
recruitment of child soldiers; prevalent rape of ethnic minority women by
soldiers; forced labor; use of landmines; and, in a country which should have a
food surplus if properly run, acute food shortages in five states.
Quintana also noted that the junta did not accede to his request to meet
political party leaders because "all the leaders were held in detention, either
under house arrest or in prisons in remote areas". And yet six months into his
job as special rapporteur, Quintana is trying to make it as easy as possible
for Myanmar's ruling junta to grasp the nettle of human rights issues that have
made it an international pariah.
He defines his task as "to cooperate with the government of Myanmar and assist
in its efforts in the field of promotion and protection of human rights".
Within that framework, he has decided to focus attention on four "core
elements" of human rights: a review of national legislation to ensure its
compliance with the constitution and international obligations, progressive
release of political prisoners, training for the armed forces in international
humanitarian law and establishing an independent, impartial judiciary.
Reporting on his second and latest mission to Myanmar in mid-February, Quintana
was at pains to find the positives. His three meetings with the junta's
human-rights body, not the most conspicuously effective group, were
"constructive". He met senior mandarins, including the chief justice, the
attorney general, the minister of home affairs, the chief of police and the
army's judge advocate general, which yielded "substantive and fruitful
discussions". The junta allowed him to visit a number of prisons and to talk to
prisoners, as well as a visit to the usually off-limits Kayin state.
The minister of home affairs promised to consider his recommendations for the
progressive release of all political prisoners, Quintana reported. The attorney
general told him that ministries were checking 380 laws for compliance with the
new constitution, passed last year in a national referendum. And the chief
justice insisted Myanmar's judiciary was independent, but accepted a suggestion
that Myanmar should engage with the UN's rapporteur on the independence of
judges and lawyers.
Weak assurances
Such assurances cost the junta little, but Quintana is also pressing for
tangible results within a specific timeframe. Release of all political
prisoners should be completed before elections scheduled for next year, he
said, "If not, it's going to be difficult to talk of real participation in the
elections." British ambassador to the UN Peter Gooderham set out the issue more
bluntly: unless all political prisoners were released and political parties and
ethnic minorities were able to participate freely in the election the outcome
would have no international credibility.
In the Orwellian state the generals have created, it is difficult to imagine
circumstances in which elections could win international respect. The junta's
mindset and approach to the elections is all too clear from its brutal
intimidation of the opposition, the hammering of any dissent and the political
party machinery apparatus it has established to ensure elections do not allow
the opposition a repeat of the democratic victory they won in 1990.
Still, Quintana's role arguably is not to second-guess the outcome of the
election, but to exploit what little space he has to try to achieve or create
conditions for measurable improvement of human rights and the position of those
within the country still active in trying to defend them.
To do that, Quintana is seeking to widen the agenda of discussions with the
junta. In addition to pursuing issues such as the incarceration of political
prisoners, where progress is locked into the junta's rigid mindset on political
reform he has turned attention to the functioning of the judicial system.
"It's important to open different channels of communication, we need to start
working on the rule of law," Quintana said in an interview. "This is the first
time we found space to have discussion with lawyers" regarding the functioning
of the judicial system.
"From our perspective it's one of the better ways to address the situation,"
said Michael Anthony of the Hong Kong-based Asian Legal Resource Center, a
human-rights watchdog that has exhaustively documented the regime's abuse of
its own legal and criminal justice system to crush dissent. The human-rights
debate "has focused too long on the list of violations without addressing the
system of injustice".
Quintana also emphasizes there will be little progress on human rights unless
the international community and particularly Myanmar's Southeast Asian
neighbors in the Association of South East Asian Nations - now establishing its
own human-rights body - are willing to push them. Legal reform and adherence to
international humanitarian law provides an avenue some observers think
Myanmar's politically-reticent Asian neighbors may find easier to support.
Quintana can have few illusions about the uphill nature of his task. At the
Human Rights Council in Geneva, non-governmental organizations were quick to
spotlight potential limitations in his dialogue with the junta. Myanmar's
constitution, tainted by the coercion and intimidation invested in winning its
approval, hardly presented a sound benchmark for assessing judicial and
legislative reforms, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development noted.
Was he confident, the UK asked, that training the judiciary, civil servants and
police would be effective given the dominant position in those sectors of
people close to the regime?
Moreover, Myanmar's ruling generals never seem to miss an opportunity to live
down to the lowest expectations of their conduct, and Tuesday was no exception.
Just as Quintana delivered his statement to the council, news broke that the
junta had arrested five more members of the opposition National League for
Democracy in Yangon. Among them was a party member reportedly inactive for more
than a year after suffering a stroke.
Nick Cumming-Bruce is a Geneva-based journalist with decades of
experience reporting from Southeast Asia.
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